Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
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Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
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Poetry should… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
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The poetry of the earth is never dead. (On the Grasshopper and Cricket)
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A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity – he is continually in for – and filling some other Body – The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute – the poet has none; no identity – he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God’s Creatures.
(from the letter to Richard Woodhouse, October 27th, 1818)
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With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
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